THE

WORD

ADEPTS, MASTERS AND MAHATMAS.

THE master enquires concerning the processes by which he has become what he is, and reviews the terrors which had beset him in the darkness in which he was immersed while a disciple. There is no pang of suffering now. Fear is gone. The darkness has no terrors for him, for darkness is subdued though not completely changed.

As the master reviews the transformations of his becoming, he perceives the thing which was the cause of all past hardships and heart stifling gloom, and above which he has risen, but from which he is not quite separated. That thing is the old elusive, formless darkness of desire, from which and out of which came myriad forms and formless dread. That formless thing is at last formed.

Here it lies now, a sphinx-like form asleep. It waits to be called to life by him if he will speak the word of life for it. It is the sphinx of the ages. It is like a half human beast which can fly; but now it rests. It is asleep. This is the thing which guards the Path and allows no one to pass who does not conquer it.

The sphinx calmly gazes on, while man dwells in the coolness of groves, while he throngs the market place, or makes his abode in pleasing pastures. However, to the explorer of life, to him to whom the world is a desert and who boldly tries to pass over its wastes into the beyond, to him the sphinx propounds her riddle, nature’s riddle, which is the problem of time. Man answers it when he becomes immortal—an immortal man. He who cannot give answer, he who does not master desire, to him the sphinx is a monster, and it devours him. He who solves the problem, masters death, conquers time, subdues nature and he goes over her subdued body along his path.

This the master has done. He has outgrown physical life, though he remains still in it; he has conquered death, though he may still have to take on bodies which will die. He is a master of time, though in time, and he is a worker with its laws. The master sees that at the birth from his physical body, which was his ascension, he had in passing freed the sphinx body from his physical body, and to that which was formless he has given form; that in this form are represented the energies and capacities of all animal bodies in physical life. The sphinx is not physical. It has the strength and courage of the lion, and is animal; it has the freedom of the bird, and the intelligence of the human. It is the form in which all the senses are and in which they may be used in their fullness.

The master is in the physical and mental worlds, but not in the astral-desire world; he has silenced it by subduing the sphinx body. To live and act in the astral world also, he must call into action his sphinx body, his desire body, which now sleeps. He calls; he speaks the word of power. It arises from its rest and stands beside his physical body. It is in form and feature the same as his physical body. It is human in form, and of exceeding strength and beauty. It rises to the call of its master and answers. It is the adept body, an adept.

With the coming to life and into action of the adept body, the inner sense world, the astral world, is sensed and seen and known, as when returning to his physical body the master again knows the physical world. The adept body sees his physical body and may enter it. The master is through them both, but is not the form of either. The physical body is aware of the adept within, though it cannot see him. The adept is aware of the master who has called him into action and whom he obeys, but whom he cannot see. He knows his master as an ordinary man knows but cannot see his conscience. The master is with them both. He is the master in the three worlds. The physical body acts as a physical man in the physical, but it is ordered and directed by the adept who is now its ruler. The adept acts in the astral world, the inner world of the senses; but though having free action, he acts in accord with the master’s will, because he feels the master’s presence, is aware of his knowledge and power, and knows it is best to be guided by the mind of the master rather than by influence of his senses. The master acts in his own world, the mental world, which includes the astral and physical worlds.

To man acting in the physical world, it seems strange, if not impossible, that he should have three bodies or be developed into three bodies, which may act separately from and independent of each other. To man in his present state it is impossible; yet, as man, he has these three as principles or potential bodies which are now blended and undeveloped, and without either of which he would not be man. His physical body gives man a place in the physical world. His desire principle gives him force and action in the physical world, as man. His mind gives him the power of thought and reason. Each of these is distinct. When one leaves, the others are incapacitated. When all act together man is a power in the world. In his unborn state man can have neither his physical body, nor his desire, nor his mind, act intelligently and independently of the other two, and, because he does not know himself apart from his body and his desire, it seems strange that he, as a mind, could act independently and intelligently apart from his desire and his physical body.

As has been stated in the preceding articles, man may develop either his desire or his mind, so that either will act intelligently and act independently of his physical body. What is now the animal in man may be trained and developed by the mind who acts with and in it, so that it will become an entity independent of the physical body. The development or birth of the desires into a body in which the mind acts and serves, similarly as the mind of man now serves his physical body, is that of an adept. An adept does not usually destroy or leave his physical body; he uses it to act in the physical world, and though he may act independently of his physical body and move freely even when away from it, yet, it is his own form. But the desire body of man is merely a principle and is without form during his life.

It may seem strange that man’s desire may be developed into form and given birth, and that that desire form may act separately from his physical body, and that similarly his mind may act as a distinct body independently of either. Yet it is no more strange than that a woman should give birth to a boy who is in appearance and tendencies different from her own nature and that of the father.

Flesh is born of flesh; desire is born of desire; thought is born of the mind; each body is born from its own nature. Birth comes after conception and maturity of body. That which the mind is able to conceive it is possible for it to become.

The physical body of man is like a man asleep. Desire does not act through it; mind does not act through it; it cannot act of itself. If a building is on fire and the fire scorches, the flesh does not feel it, but when the burning reaches the nerves it awakens the desire and calls it into action. Desire acting through the senses causes the physical body to beat down women and children, if they stand in its way of escape to a place of safety. But if, while on the way, the cry of a wife or child should reach into the heart and the man rushes to their rescue and risks his life to save them, this is the mental man, who overcomes the maddened desire and guides its power, so that through the physical body it lends its efforts at rescue. Each of the men is distinct from the other, yet all act together.

That an adept, being of the same form as his physical body should enter and act through his physical body is no more strange than that the white blood cells of the body should pass through other cells or the connective tissues of the body, yet they do. It is no more strange than that some semi-intelligence which is the control of a medium should act in the medium’s body or emerge from it as a distinct and separate form; yet the truth of such occurrence has been attested by some able men of science.

Things which are strange should not be therefore ignored. Statements which are strange should be taken for what they are worth; it is not wise to speak of what one does not understand, as being ridiculous or impossible. It may be called ridiculous by one who has looked at it from all sides and without prejudice. He who discards as ridiculous an important statement without having used his reason is not making use of his prerogative as a man.

One who becomes a master does not bend the efforts of his mind to become an adept by developing his desire body. He turns all effort to the overcoming and subduing of his desire and developing as distinct the entity of his mind. It has been explained that one who becomes a master does not first become an adept. The reason is that by becoming an adept the mind is bound more securely to the desires than while in the physical body; for the desire body, as an adept, acting in the inner and astral world of the senses has there more power over the mind than has the unformed desire body, while the mind of man acts in his body in the physical world. But when man has bent all efforts toward entering the mental world consciously and intelligently, and after he has so entered, he does by the power of mind that which is done by the aspirant to adeptship, by the power of desire. One who becomes a master becomes first aware of and lives consciously in the mental world, and then descends to the inner sense world of the adepts, which then has no power over him. The unborn mind of the adept has an unequal struggle with the fully developed desire body which is the adept, and so a man who becomes first an adept is not likely to become a master in that period of evolution.

This applies to the races of men as they now are. In earlier times and before desire had gained such ascendency over the minds of men, the natural way of development after incarnation into physical bodies was, that the desire body was developed and born through and from the physical body. Then the mind could, through its efforts at management of its desire body be born through its adept desire body, as that was born through its physical body. As the races of men developed further and the minds were more dominated by desire those who became adepts remained adepts and did not or could not become masters. With the birth of the Aryan race, the difficulties were increased. The Aryan race has desire as its dominant principle and force. This desire controls the mind which is developing through it.

Mind is the matter, the thing, the power, the principle, the entity, which is developing through all other races, from the earliest periods of the manifested worlds. Mind in its development, passes through the races, and is developed through the races.

The physical body is the fourth race, represented in the zodiac by libra ♎︎, sex, and the only race which is visible to man, though all the other preceeding races are present inside and about the physical. Desire is the fifth race, represented in the zodiac by the sign scorpio ♏︎, desire, which is striving to take on form through the physical. This fifth, desire race, should have been controlled by the mind in earlier periods and especially while operating those physical bodies usually called the Aryan race. But as the mind has not dominated and controlled desire and as it has and is becoming stronger, desire overcomes and attaches the mind to itself, so that it now has the ascendency. Therefore, the mind of a man who works for adeptship is held captive in the adept body, even as man’s mind is now held captive in the prison house of his physical body. The fifth race, if developed naturally to its fulness, would be a race of adepts. The incarnate mind of man acting freely, and being fully developed, is or will be the sixth race, and is shown in the zodiac by the sign sagittary ♐︎, thought. The sixth race began in the middle of the fifth race as the fifth race began in the middle of the fourth race, and as the fourth race began in the middle of the third race.¹

The fifth race is not fully developed, because desire acting through man is not developed. The only representatives of the fifth race are adepts, and they are not physical but are fully developed desire bodies. The sixth race will be thought bodies, not physical bodies nor desire (adept) bodies. The sixth race when fully developed will be a race of masters and that race is now represented by the masters. The master’s work is to aid the incarnate minds of men to reach up by effort to their attainment in the mental world, which is their native world. The Ayran race, which is a physical race, has more than half run its course.

There is no exact line of demarcation where one race ends or another race begins, yet there are distinct markings according to the lives of men. Such markings are made by events in the lives of men and are at or about the time of such changes recorded in the writings as history or marked by records in stone.

The discovery of America and the landing of the Pilgrims marked the beginning of the formation of the sixth great race. Each great race develops on its own continent and spreads out into branches over all the world. The landing of the Pilgrims was a physical landing, but it marked the beginnings of a new era in the development of the mind. The characteristic and dominant feature of the sixth race, which began in America and is now developing in and through the United States, is thought. Thought characterizes the race which is forming in the United States, as desire is the dominant feature of the fifth race which was born in Asia, spread over the world and is wearing out in Europe.

The types of thought of the thought race will give different features and physical types to the fourth race bodies of the sixth or thought race, which will be as distinct in their way as a Mongolian body is from a Caucasian. The races have their seasons and run their courses as naturally and according to law, as one season is followed by another. But those among a race who so will, need not die with their race. A race decays, a race dies, because it does not attain its possibilities. Those of a race who will, by individual effort, may attain what would be possible to the race. Hence one may develop to be an adept because he has the force of the race behind him. One may become a master because he has the power of thought. Without desire, one could not be an adept; with it, he can. Without the power to think one cannot become a master; by thought, he can.

Because the mind is working in the desire world and with desires; because desire has dominance over mind; because the time has passed for man to try by natural development to become an adept, he should not try for adeptship first. Because man cannot likely grow out of adeptship and become a master; because the new race is one of thought; because he may with safety to himself and others develop by thought and because he can be of more service to himself and his race by attaining the possibilities of his race, it is better for him who seeks progress or attainment to place himself in thought with and seek entrance in the school of the masters, and not in the school of the adepts. To try for adeptship now, is like planting grain in late summer. It will take root and it will grow but will not come to perfection and may be killed or stunted by the frosts. When planted at the proper season in the spring it develops naturally and will come to full growth. Desire acts on the mind as do the frosts on unripe grain, which they wither in its husk.

When man becomes a master he has passed through all that the adept passes through but not in the way in which the adept develops. The adept develops through his senses. The mind develops as master through his mind faculties. The senses are comprehended in the faculties. That which a man goes through in becoming an adept, and what he experiences in the sense world through his desires, the disciple of the masters passes through mentally, overcoming the desires by the mind. In the overcoming of the desires by the mind, desire is given form, because thought gives form to desire; desire must take form according to thought if the thought will not take form in desire. So that when the master by his faculties reviews the processes of his becoming from discipleship, he finds desire has taken form and that the form awaits his call to action.